I open my eyes.
A churn of bulbous clouds clot the slate sky—
Shock blazes through my chest, making my breath hitch.
Cainon let me out.
It worked.
Relief surges up my throat, then chokes me when a vision flashes: short swirls of rosy hair; wide, terrified eyes and frightened sounds; cells and cells of battered lives, now entirely dependent onme.
My new reality kneels on my chest like a mountain.
Me.
Crushed beneath the mighty weight, my lids yield to the downward tug, and I close my eyes.
Another raindrop strikes my lips with a splash of cold that shivers through me.
The sky is crying.
I want to scream. Tell it to stop.
To not waste its tears on me. Tell it Ideservethis burden.
The backs of my lids flash with a burst of white that electrifies the air, and a deafening crackle follows, so violent I flinch.
Another forward shove sends water sloshing up the side of the boat as a fervid gaze rakes across my skin and leaves a prickly trail. “You’remine.”
The familiar voice cuts through me, curdling my blood, spilling my will to think and feel.
I fall eagerly into the dark.
Itap my thigh with the vial, watchingherfrom where I’m reclined against the wall. Her spine is hunched, shoulders tucked forward, that long, silver hair unbound and puddled behind her stool as she works the bright strands wrapped around her trembling fingers. Threads them into place.
Drawing deep, I screw my nose at the heady scent of desperation seeping from her pores.
I’m late, but really, she’s only got herself to blame. After all, I was cleaning up the fucking messshemade.
My gaze lifts, narrowing on the half-finished tapestry she’s working on. You can see the rapt attention she’s poured into the design—the colors, the tension of each bulging thread. It all fits together in perfect, blissful harmony, and I’m certain that’s all she’s ever wanted. All she cares about.
Perfection.
Her love for the craft … it’sendless,poured all over the walls downstairs; a constant mutating thing that grows and fuckinggrows.I have nightmares of those tapestries spawning mouths and taking big, bloody bites of me, masticating my face until I barely recognize myself.
I should burn them all, but I’m too good to her to even consider it.
Too lenient.
She uses her weft stick to tighten the layer, the instrument jiggling with the uncontrollable shake of her hands. She releases a frustrated grunt, pushing some rogue tendrils behind her ear with a dash of her hand. Again, I tap the vial against my thigh.
“Are you enjoying that?”
Her flinch is a whip snapping at my heart, making that voice inside me pick.
Pick.
Pick.
